There, that refrain again! This time it was a bit more justified than two days before, because Tech Drawing was a new subject to me and I had never sat an exam in it before, so had no idea what to expect or what was expected.

Science was another matter. One of the complications caused to my school life by moving to New Zealand was that, in England, I had spent a term studying the very distinct subjects of Physics, Biology and Chemistry, whereas in New Zealand the three subjects were lumped together. My parents did try to make sure that I didn’t miss any of the important stuff and each of my teachers had provided a list of the topics I would miss whilst I was away. It was pretty easy for the teachers in my other subjects to cover this, but poor old Mr Beechey had a triple hit of areas to teach me and, despite some extra lessons, some things inevitably didn’t go in.

In this exam, for once, the change counted for me, because there was a question on the exam paper on cell structure, which we had not covered in class but which I had already studied in the UK. Unfortunately, the bonus marks I could get from answering that question merely made my final mark more respectable, rather than ‘above average’ as they should have done.